


Spin it Round Again

by helena_s_renn



Series: Leaning, Learning [5]
Category: Def Leppard, Music RPF
Genre: "Getting old" schtick, All sorts of shit they'd never say, Backstage, Future Fic (at the time of this writing), Humor, Implied/Referenced Past Relationships, Innuendo, M/M, Sav's pink pants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-15 10:41:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15411138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena_s_renn/pseuds/helena_s_renn
Summary: Backstage pre- and post-show, Rick and Sav banter about past glories and their present state(s) of affairs.If that made him old, maybe it also made him a little bit wise.





	Spin it Round Again

**Author's Note:**

> *My reaction to reading the quote at the start of this: "Oh, Rick, you shouldn't have said that!!" IOW, a certain DL-slash writer is gonna have a field day with it.  
> *The [fictional] idea is that Def Leppard would resurrect the "In The Round, In your Face" stage including the drum lift during the UK leg of the 2018 tour. We can dream...  
> *"Intro" - from the song "Won't get Fooled Again" by The Who.  
> *Sorry re: the mix of UK and US terms.  
> *Photographic inspiration from FB.  
> Beta and so much more by ChristianHowe. Any remaining mistakes are mine.

_"...the thing that got to me was that drum riser. You know every time that thing went up. Sav used to stand behind me with his back to me. And as the riser got higher and higher and higher, he would push, push further and further into me. To the point where I was like crouched over my kit. Like Sav give me some room here man."  
-Rick Allen_

 

-2018, December, backstage, five minutes to showtime

 

"Can you believe we're going to do this again? Thought we'd seen the last of it... what's it been? Twenty-five years ago?" Sav looked over at Rick. If he was nervous, he wasn't showing it. Not really. It was harder and harder to read him these days in general but Rick could tell he was jonesing hardcore for a smoke, just as he was, himself. Certain cravings never died. 

"Aye, you know that as well as I do."

"Wasn't it you who said you hoped they resurrected this death trap?" Sav's tone stood somewhere between wry and challenging. As in, he dared Rick to ride the fucking thing. And Sav knew very well who'd said it. 

"Well, it was totally freaking cool back in the day. Now, one wrong move and we're fucked." 

"No different than 25 years ago. Only difference is now they won't let us anywhere near it without being strapped in like it's a padded cell and we're lunatics. With osteoporosis."

"There's a thought." Rick sniggered. "Big words, Sav."

Standard issue eyeroll, and he knew what was going on behind the St. George: standard issue crotch-grab in his general direction. 

Rick went on, sticking with the themes, "We've got to be mad, at our age. But we always did have balls of steel." 

"Aye." Sav spun on him. "I read your little interview, about how I kept 'pushing into you'. Uh-huh. Not very subtle at all, Rick. Why don't you just announce how riding that thing scared us stiff?" The eyebrow crawling up his forehead relayed the double meaning. "'Gimme some room, Sav', till you were all bent over your kit..."

"I said 'crouched'," Rick corrected him. Funny that Sav hadn't rung him to take the piss the day it hit the website. The others had. "There's a difference."

The change in Sav's posture was negligible but certainly not unreadable. "Realleh," he drawled, leaning back slightly, swinging his headstock a few inches in Rick's direction. 

"You bend me over like that again up there, you might find yourself..." Rick directed his eyes at the series of catwalks and rigging far above. Damn, it was giving him vertigo already. 

This time Sav cut in. "What's that you say? You can't meditate effectively when you can't sit down? Because I'mma--" The immediately recognisable Hammond-drums-scream-guitars of their intro overrode him, although his mouth kept going. Considering the number of times he saw Sav's front teeth biting down on his lower lip, the upper drawn back between other facial configurations for other sounds, Rick could imagine what sort of filth it was spewing. He bumped his hips at his fellow rhythm man once and ran on stage. 

 

...

 

The bar around the outside edge was now double, the upper one waist-high, and it rose as the platform itself did. Sav hadn't been kidding about being strapped in. Management wouldn't let him get on it without the harness he insisted on wearing under – not over – his clothes being clipped to the railing. Rick wasn't that vain. They'd rehearsed the whole logistics-nightmare production four or five times. It still wasn't even close to the degree of intensity, movement, pushing and balancing that a live show entailed. 

No one else but Sav was in the dressing room yet when Rick staggered in post-encore, dripping sweat and reeking. Already barefoot and shirtless, Sav had the fly of his pink fucking trousers undone, and was only beginning to unstrap himself from the harness. Rick averted his eyes... too late. "Real nice. What, are you _trying_ to make us late?" 

"Don't get your knickers in a twist."

" _My_ knickers? What do you call those?" 

"You're the one who can't keep his eyes to himself. Some things--"

"--never change," Rick finished for him. "No, they don't. You always did know the power of your own attraction." At their age, a positive stroke or two couldn't hurt. 

Sav smiled fondly from under the sweat-matted frizzed mess hanging in his face. "Yeah, well, coming from you, I might actually believe it." 

"Ten million fangirls can't be wrong." 

"Sure they can. Think about it. What if we'd all worn old second-hand clothes, bad hair, didn't bother to get our teeth fixed, played ugly-arse guitars and never learned to move on stage?"

"Pfft, we'd probably have got more cred."

Sav's pained expression could mean a number of things: that Rick was right; that if he had it to do over again, he'd do things differently; that he didn't give a fuck and found the irony a farce. "Cred. You have it, deservedly. How could you not know that?" That part was sincere. 

"Shut it, you're making me blush. Anyway, didn't really matter what I looked like behind those loud crashy-bangy things called drums and cymbals, and good thing." 

The harrumph from Sav's throat conveyed his pique. "You were in all the pictures and posters, too. You got plenty of... attention." He pushed his trousers down to his ankles and stepped out, leaving him in only pants and that half-undone fucking harness. "Does it bother you, the shite we got up to when we were kids?" 

Rick kept his distance and sat down on a wooden bench. "Bother me? You mean how you were my first, officially--" 

"Only by the skin of my--" 

Rick spoke over Sav. "Blah, blah, blah. Nothing will change that. And no. Never." 

"Me, neither."

For half a second, Rick wondered why Sav was making reference to that now. It didn't take a genius to figure out. He chose to address it by reiterating things that had already been said, although not by either of them till now. "You know, in certain lights, when your face is half obscured and the colour saturation is low, you could almost be him... As I'd imagine, aged forward like the rest of us."

Sav's pause and tiny nod showed his comprehension. He chose not to stray into sentimentality, not then. "Good god, you're a sap!" 

"I learnt it from you." 

The shrug said without saying that Sav could hardly debate that point, considering some of their œuvre that bore his name. After a beat, he side-eyed Rick. "Can you help me with my harness thingie?"

Rick blinked. "'Can I'? You want _my_ help... with those clips and buckles? Very thin excuse, Sav." 

"Since you're being thick about a straight-up proposition and all, you could use your teeth," he supplied helpfully, showing his own.

"You just want me on my knees." 

"Might as well, before the rheumatism sets in. You could use the practice." 

Mock-affronted, Rick swung his leg over the bench. "Get your panties over here before you ruin them, then. The things I do!" 

"And the things I'll do." Rick got a lapful of sweaty bass player, possibly the last time, possibly not; he never knew one way or the other. 

He preferred it that way. If and when, it was always a pleasant surprise, no expectations, no set rules. He'd learned that almost forty years ago. If that made him old, maybe it also made him a little bit wise. 

 

Fin.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, writing a fic with no sex was weird for me.


End file.
